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Monk renews call for apology or boycott
Irrawaddy - September 28, 2009
Alex Ellgee, Mae Sot – "I walked out and saw the Burmese military putting up barriers outside of Shwedagon Pagoda. It did not scare us though, it just made us more determined," said King Zero, a monk who recently wrote a statement again demanding an apology from the military.
A similar statement two years ago led to the "Saffron Revolution" of September 2007.
Two years ago this month, King Zero, a Burmese monk, was walking back from an Internet cafi after e-mailing photographs of the previous day's protests to various media organizations around the world. The monks had been marching in Rangoon for five days and despite receiving information that the soldiers would shoot, they continued.
King Zero, speaking in his library in Mae Sot, Thailand, told The Irrawaddy Burmese monks will never surrender in the fight for democracy. "The monks will never give up. We will continue to risk our lives so the people of Burma can have freedom from suffering," he said.
King Zero works with U Gambira, who is now serving a 63-year sentence for his leadership in the uprising, which led to hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets of Rangoon and other cities in September 2007.
King Zero quietly toured the county handing out pamphlets to monasteries and encouraging monks to participate in peaceful marches. Changing monasteries every day, he worked to create an underground monk network to relay news and information around Burma.
Then on Sept. 7, King Zero wrote the statement that called on the military junta to apologize for its treatment of monks in Pakokku, where dozens were beaten by government soldiers.
Now two years later, King Zero has written another statement calling again on the military to make a public apology by October or risk another boycott of alms from members of the military. If the monks' new demands are not met, then once again monks will turn over their bowls and refuse donations from members of the military and their families, he said.
Since the statement was announced, the government has launched a widespread crackdown on activists and monks in Burma. In recent weeks, eight monks have been arrested and surveillance has been beefed up with monks being followed and searched around the country.
Despite the current situation, King Zero remains hopeful and determined that the boycott will materialize into an uprising that can overturn the generals.
"In September 2007 they were arresting student leaders like Min Ko Naing, but we carried on. Now they are arresting our fellow monks, but again, we will carry on and never give up," he said.
The night King Zero returned from witnessing the barricades being put up, the government launched a full scale crack down on the demonstrations. At 1 am, many monks arrested and hauled off to interrogation centers.
Ignoring the threats, thousands took to the streets the next day in defiance of the orders to stop the marches. It took the government five days to start shooting and beating protestors because the battalion stationed in Rangoon refused to attack the monks.
The junta replaced the battalion with the notorious 66th Battalion.
Defectors have reported that the generals indoctrinated the soldiers with the idea that the monks who were demonstrating were bogus and that had been given alcohol before they went into the streets. As a result, the 66th Battalion reaped havoc in the following days, killing and beating demonstrators across Rangoon and creating scenes of violence which filled newspapers and TVs screens around the world.
What had started out as a time of unity and hope, ended up showing the brutality of a dictatorship that would kill monks to hold on to power. By the end of the crackdown, the monastic order was in tatters, with thousands of people imprisoned, and many dead and many and injured.
Despite the carnage, King Zero said that good has come out of the demonstrations because the people of Burma are now more aware and interested in politics, since they saw how the government treated the monks, who enjoy widespread respect.
"Now they know that the generals are not real Buddhists. No real Buddhist can given an order to shoot or beat a monk," he said. "The generals know in their minds they are not Buddhist, but they pretend they are. They cannot worship Buddha because they worship power and as long as they do that, they believe they can do what they want."
The Burmese government has repeatedly criticized monks for straying away from Buddhist teachings and fostering unrest.
For King Zero, there is no doubt in his mind that monks should be involved in the struggle to bring democracy to Burma.
"In my country 90 percent of the people are Buddhist and even though they are poor, they offer a lot to the monks, and we have a responsibility to protect the people. The people's lives are getting poorer and poorer every day. They don't have money to eat proper food or to get proper medical treatment. We have a responsibility to protect and help the people. If we cannot change the system, then the situation will just get worse so we decided to risk our lives for the people."
He said the All Burma Monks Alliance feels a real urgency to deliver change to the people before the 2010 elections, which they believe will only make things worse. They fear that by accepting the elections, the people of Burma will endure increased repression by the government.
King Zero deplores the election and rejects the notion that "something is better than nothing," arguing that the opposition will be able to do less after the elections because the government will be seen as legitimate and could therefore exercise even more control on domestic and exiled opposition groups.
He said the next few months are crucial for the democracy movement. Like September 2007 took the world by surprise, maybe something will spark an uprising again, like inflation from the new 5,000 kyat note.
No one is sure whether the October boycott will turn into a full scale uprising, but one thing is certain. The Saffron Revolution lives on in King Zero and others who will continue to oppose the rule of the junta until Burma has achieved democracy.
"The Saffron Revolution is far from over," he said.
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